So I asked in another topic about Grub hanging in the shell. I installed Ubuntu Studio from a Live USB, alongside Windows 8.1, but encountered this problem -- with help I was able to at least get into the new OS. Now the second half of the problem (that Grub isn't working in the first place) is almost a separate issue, so I've created a separate question and hopefully I can provide more information than at first.

Once I was in, I did more research to find a solution to the overall issue, and I thought I had found it in the answer to this question: I booted into my live USB, and ran these commands, and got output as follows.

ubuntu-studio@ubuntu-studio:~$ mkdir tmp
ubuntu-studio@ubuntu-studio:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda8 /home/ubuntu-studio/tmp
ubuntu-studio@ubuntu-studio:~$ sudo grub-install --root-directory=/home/ubuntu-studio/tmp /dev/sda
/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible.
/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/usr/sbin/grub-bios-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists.